Porno cyber squatters target Intel

Intel Inside? Maybe, but that ain't all...

Intel was caught with its pants down today after discovering it was satisfying hard core porn fanatics. Not wanting to miss out on the multitude of IT addicts trying to log onto Intel's Web site, a porn site has opened up offering its services under the guise of intel-inside.com. Innocent voyeurs may well wonder why they ever got a kick out of chips after a quick gander at this spring-board site with links to 50freepics.com and cybererotica.com. The Web site, registered in March by one Thomas Puntman, displays an unholy host of bedroom activities. But this could actually work in Intel's favour, for punters will surely never again think about defecting to AMD. The Athlon may be fast, but it certainly can't beat this online performance. Intel was unaware of the site's existence when contacted this afternoon. "We take a very dim view of any abuse of our brand names or company name," said a red faced Intel representative. "This is a matter that we need to take further." Tim Ashley, sales and marketing director at domain registrar NetBenefit, said Intel's brush with cyber-squatting should serve as a warning to others. "This could happen to anyone. Companies who haven't registered their trademarks properly need to do it before someone else does," he said. Current UK and US laws mean that anyone can register domains without having a connection with the company or trademark. URLs are given out on a first-come-first-served basis. "It can be very damaging and embarrassing when something like this happens," said Ashley. "It wasn't very clever of Intel not to have registered it. "However, it would have been more dangerous if it was a rival chip vendor that had registered it." But he added: "I have the greatest sympathy for them. "These kind of responsibilities have moved out of the IT department of many companies, and into the marketing department –- which are often not so clued up about the situation." ®